Research Farid Zahnoun

Abstract

Within neuroscience, invoking information is standard practice. Moreover, many have now embraced the view of the brain as a prediction machine which updates its predictions in light of incoming information. Yet, these 'Predictive Processing' theories face big conceptual challenges. By relying on semantic notions like information, representation, prediction etc., they resist integration within the larger causal-mechanistic framework of which they claim to be a part. Yet, if we can't understand the neuroscientific data in terms of upstream information, downstream prediction and resulting prediction errors, how, then, should the neuroscientist interpret the bidirectional neural activity? First, the project will reinterpret the data which the Predictive Processing theorist frames in terms of prediction. The pivotal move here will be to substitute the notion of prediction with an empirically and experimentally underpinned notion of anticipation that does fit within the boundaries of the causal-mechanistic framework. Second, the research will investigate in what sense the data can be applied to two outstanding philosophical problems: the nature of information (information as relative to anticipation) and the mind-body problem (anticipation as a phenomenon cutting across the physical-mental distinction). This essentially interdisciplinary project, then, aspires a fruitful cross-fertilization between philosophy and (theoretical and experimental) neuroscience.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Myin Erik
• Fellow: Zahnoun Farid

Research team(s)

• Centre for Philosophical Psychology

Project type(s)

• Research Project